Why we're getting fatter

[donheff]

Sadly, that was proven to be true in the concentration camps in WW2.

And that is about what it would take today to achieve a large loss following the standard advice. So who among us has the self discipline to self impose that kind of regimen?

 

[TromboneAl]

Sadly, that was proven to be true in the concentration camps in WW2.

No, they were fed less, but they did receive food.

I'm saying that if it were as simple as calories in, calories out, you could totally stop eating, and wait until you reached your target weight.

But that won't work, you will eventually get so hungry that you will have to eat. And if you didn't eat, you would die.

My point is that it is obviously not as simple as CI/CO.

It is not rocket science, it is physiology and psychology, which is much more complex than rocket science.

 

[M Paquette]

This whole thing started about when the Commies began putting fluoride in the water, didn't it?

I blame carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

It's elemental, really...

(Exit, pursued by a bear)

 

[Moemg]

Sadly, that was proven to be true in the concentration camps in WW2.

I think Bestwifever is correct . If we were given a significant drop in food no matter what the food was we would lose weight .Sure we would be hungry but if no additional food was available we would adapt .

 

[harley]

Seems simple to me - we consume more calories than we expend.

That's true, but it's like saying that people who can't retire spend more than they make. It's also true, but so simplistic as to be useless. There are many causes for the conditions. One could be lack of willpower, but it's not the only one or even the most common one. We're complex organisms, and our actions are the result of complex interactions.

 

[TromboneAl]

I think Bestwifever is correct . If we were given a significant drop in food no matter what the food was we would lose weight .Maybe we would be in bad shape but we would be thinner .

That only works if we are in cages. That's the problem with CI/CO: we are not in cages.

 

[flyfishnevada]

I was watching TV (and that's a whole other issue isn't it ) and heard a guy tell a joke to the effect that were all fat because we live in America and the food is good. If we lived in those other crappy countries whose food tastes like dog****, we'd be skinny too.

Sound like he had it right if that study is to be believed.

By the way when I had my diverticulitis attack, they didn't feed me for like 4 days and then I was on a soft foods diet for another 12 days (turns out I only had to be on it for 5 or so but no one told me that) I was getting 900 calories a day (I didn't figure out ice cream is a soft food until later ). I did in deed lose weight and a lot of it. I wouldn't recommend it though.

 

[Bestwifeever]

That only works if we are in cages. That's the problem with CI/CO: we are not in cages.

Okay, if you say so.

 

[haha]

I don't have a link, as it seemed self evident to me, but epidemiologists studied over quite some time a group of very hardcore Amisch in Southern Ontario. I think these people came from Germany, Switzerland and Alsace in the 19th century. They have strongly resisted modernizing their life. No tractors or other powered farm machinery, no labor saving devices for the women who are all homemakers. I don't know about refrigeration. Anyway, all the adults were given pedometers. The men averaged a bit over 18,000 steps daily, and the women somewhere just above 15,000. This is a very high caloric output, if they were not doing anything else other than walking around. But I spent my childhood summers on a non-mechanized farm, and walking around is only a part of what they do. It would not surprise me if the average male caloric output was ~1000 kc/day or more. As one might expect, there were very few overweight people of either sex, and no obese people. Their diet was described as "hearty".

1000kc/day is small beans for a swimmer in training, but a very large amount for people from young to well into middle age, going about their daily lives. I also have seen that if you do enough hard work, you are not going to be fat, no matter how much or what you eat. I lived in logging country before the spotted owl made logging a sometime thing. These guys looked like those old pictures you see of loggers with a big two man saw standing by a giant cedar or redwood or Douglas fir. They look like they have the body fat of Michal Jordan in his prime. They only gained weight when they were injured, or lost a step and got moved up to operating a crane or some much lower ouput job.

But try to tell some modern person that he will never get fat if he only commits to exercising enough to burn 1000 kc/day. Essentially impossible. Modern men and women of necessity spend most of their time sitting on their often ample butts.

In a recent blog post Stephan Guyenet adressed the exercise question, specifically the assertion that if you exercise more, you just eat more. He found that this is indeed true, for people with low bady fat. As he put it, the body does not like to let its fat stores get too low. However, he also found that people who had excess fat, although they did in fact eat more after exercising, they did not eat enough to completely replace what they burned. I don't know how good the evidence is, as I was primed to accept this finding since it corresponds with my own experience and my observations.

Ha

 

[Moemg]

That only works if we are in cages. That's the problem with CI/CO: we are not in cages.

Get in the cage and enjoy it !

 

[Katsmeow]

It seems likely to me that the real issue is that there isn't just one cause.

It seems to be a combination of things. Lot of cheap, good food. Eating out more often. A more sedentary lifestyle. I do tend to thing that carbs -- particularly the sugary refined carbs -- may be more likely to promote weight gain than other types of food.

I truly tend to tune out the people who seem to want to point at only one thing and say that is the cause since I just don't think that things are simple. If it was that simple you wouldn't have conflicting research all over the place.

I do think there is -- slowly -- more consensus developing about some of this. The one thing that I do tend to think that the evidence is showing that losing weight for many people is well nigh impossible and that really the real "payoff" is not so much in helping obese people lose weight but in preventing obesity in the first place. The thing is that I don't think they know how to do that. (I'm not saying by the way that weight loss efforts should be abandoned...I go to Weight Watchers every week....but just that I recognize that for most people permanent weight loss, particularly significant weight loss, just doesn't happen).

 

[harley]

I can believe that if you have to work in such a way that you burn thousands of calories/day like Ha's Amish people that you won't get fat pretty much no matter what you eat. Also, if food wasn't easily available and affordable it would be a lot harder to be fat. But it is. If you sit on your ample fat ass 8 or 10 or 12 hours per day processing TPS reports, I believe it would require an extremely high willpower person to be able to 1) work out hard enough to burn an equal amount of calories as the Amish, or 2) control your caloric intake enough to limit your weight. Naturally ectomorphic people seem to, for whatever reason, not be driven to eat. I don't know if they don't taste things the same way, or if they aren't psychologically maladjusted in the same way, or whatever. But my thin but sedentary friends just never seem to want more food than it takes to get them through to their next meal. I, on the other hand, enjoy the act of eating and tasting, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the needs of my body or nutritional balance. And that's the part I don't understand about all this. What makes them not care about food other than as (hopefully tasty) fuel? This is the part that's missing from the formula as to why we're not all at the appropriate weight. Just Say No doesn't work very well, no matter what the substance is. People who say no mostly aren't applying willpower, they are just not doing something they have no desire to do anyway. People who try to say no but are driven to say yes aren't often successful at staying away.

 

[Zero]

harley, I've seen "EXACTLY" the same #1, #2 that you mention. I've had several friends in the past that would work out for hours just to be able to consume one more jumbo burrito, and others who would munch on lettuce all day in order to avoid exercise. The common denominator with both types was they were both focused on not becoming obese.

If either of those two types lost their willpower then weight gain was inevitable.

BUT, there seemed to be a #3 - those who could care less about their weight and physical fitness- and they ate whatever tasted good to them and in quantities that sated them and looks/fitness/health be damned.

And I believe all were shaped by calories in vs calories out but the choice making was driven by a much more complex subject ... pride.

 

[Zero]

Get in the cage and enjoy it !

How did you sneak in and get that picture?

 

[donheff]

I can believe that if you have to work in such a way that you burn thousands of calories/day like Ha's Amish people that you won't get fat pretty much no matter what you eat.

300 pound plus NFL linemen are not all lean. They carry a lot of muscle but they also have a boatload of fat.

 

[haha]

300 pound plus NFL linemen are not all lean. They carry a lot of muscle but they also have a boatload of fat.

Again, offensive linemen usualy do not want to be lean. A big part of their job is to be hard to move out of the way. Find a fat college swimmer or rower.

Ha

 

[donheff]

Again, offensive linemen usualy do not want to be lean. A big part of their job is to be hard to move out of the way. Find a fat college swimmer or rower.

Ha

No argument. I was simply disputing the idea that if you exercise hard enough you can't get fat.

 

[harley]

300 pound plus NFL linemen are not all lean. They carry a lot of muscle but they also have a boatload of fat.

Again, offensive linemen usualy do not want to be lean. A big part of their job is to be hard to move out of the way. Find a fat college swimmer or rower.

Ha

No argument. I was simply disputing the idea that if you exercise hard enough you can't get fat.

Well, I suspect offensive linemen (as well as heavy weight lifters, sumo wrestlers, and others who need weight to perform properly) still have significantly lower BMI than they look like they do. There's this thing called slab muscle that looks like fat but isn't. But you're right, even if you burn a ton of calories, if you try (especially using supplements and chemicals) to gain fat you can do it.

 

[lightspeed]

I agree if you eat more calories than you burn you get fatter and fatter. It doesn't matter if your calorie intake is from bacon or pasta or celery. I notice portion sizes in the states are huge. If I eat a whole portion in almost any restaurant, I am so full I need to lie down when I get home. In France or Germany, where I visit regularly, after a meal I feel good, not hungry but not stuffed after a meal. It's not exactly low fat food in Europe either, I think it is just more reasonable portion size.

 

[Nords]

So who among us has the self discipline to self impose that kind of regimen?

Every season on "The Biggest Loser".

And as soon as the spotlight turns away, most of them gain it right back.

 

[sailor]

Well, I suspect offensive linemen (as well as heavy weight lifters, sumo wrestlers, and others who need weight to perform properly) still have significantly lower BMI than they look like they do. There's this thing called slab muscle that looks like fat but isn't.

Harley - I would think the other way around.
BMI only takes the mass and height into considerations and muscle is denser than fat.

 

[TromboneAl]

And, or course, the refrigerator:

 

[Bestwifeever]

Here's an article from this morning's paper (to sum up, don't eat after 7:00 pm at night):

Even though they ate a high-fat diet, the mice who wrapped up their eating day early and were forced to fast for 16 hours were lean — almost as lean as mice in a control group who ate regular chow. But the mice who noshed on high-fat chow around the clock became obese, even though they consumed the same amount of fat and calories as their counterparts on the time-restricted diet.

Extra weight wasn't their only problem. The obese mice developed high cholesterol, high blood sugar, fatty liver disease and metabolic problems. The mice who ate fatty food but were forced to fast showed hardly any signs of inflammation or liver disease, and their cholesterol and blood sugar levels were virtually indistinguishable from those of mice who ate regular chow. When put on an exercise wheel, they showed the most endurance and the best motor control of all the animals in the study. Nighttime fasting may foster weight loss - latimes.com

 

[haha]

Here's an article from this morning's paper (to sum up, don't eat after 7:00 pm at night):

On the other hand, Spain and Argentina and many other Latin countries rarely even consider dinner before 10:00pm, and they are a loss less fat than North Americans who eat their dinner early.

Ha

 

[Bestwifeever]

On the other hand, Spain and Argentina and many other Latin countries rarely even consider dinner before 10:00pm, and they are a loss less fat than North Americans who eat their dinner early.

Ha

I imagine the Spanish-speaking mice were in the control group.